Farm groups are pressuring the Canadian government to negotiate more bilateral free trade agreements.
That is one of the key messages prime minister Paul Martin heard from farm leaders when he met with them in Saskatoon March 16 during his tour of Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Pulse Canada chair Jack Froese was one of three farm officials who raised the issue during the closed-door meeting. He told Martin that while World Trade Organization talks are important, other avenues of trade must be explored.
“We feel we need to go the bilateral route as well,” said Froese in an interview.”We need to do a fair bit more of that.”
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Pulse Canada is part of an intensive lobby effort on the bilateral trade issue that includes the Canadian Wheat Board, the Canola Council of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the Canadian Pork Council and Canada Pork International.
Late last year the six farm groups, which represent 30 percent of Canadian agri-food exports, sent a letter to international trade minister Jim Peterson urging Canada to keep pace with exporters like the United States and Australia, which are negotiating regional trade agreements at a breakneck pace.
Gord Bacon, chief executive officer of Pulse Canada, said that for most farmers the ultimate goal remains negotiating a new WTO deal.
“But we can’t stand back and allow bilateral agreements to undermine our competitive position while we’re waiting for the WTO process to pay dividends.”
An example is the new trade agreements Australia and New Zealand recently signed with Thailand. Those deals eliminate a 30 percent import duty on peas for those two countries placing Canada at a significant competitive disadvantage in that Asian marketplace.
“We’ll go from a mid-40 percent market share down to zero in 2005,” said Bacon.
The pulse industry is also deeply concerned about deals the U.S. has signed with Morocco and is in the process of negotiating with the Andean countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, which are all big pulse-consuming nations.
Those particular deals also make the Canadian Wheat Board nervous. Morocco purchased 450,000 tonnes of Canadian durum in the 2003-04 crop year, while Peru, Ecuador and Colombia typically buy about one million tonnes of wheat a year.
According to CWB estimates the Andean Free Trade Agreement alone could cost western Canadian farmers up to $42.5 million a year.
The U.S. is also negotiating free trade deals with Bahrain, Panama and Thailand, as well as more extensive agreements with collections of countries in Central America, southern Africa, South America and the Middle East.
Countries targeted by American free-trade agreements account for approximately 30 percent of Canadian wheat exports.
But at least one farm group is not participating in the consolidated lobby effort.
The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance refused to sign the letter to the trade minister because it believes bilateral trade deals are simply market access agreements that fail to address the larger issue of agricultural subsidies.
“We were really concerned that we would be diverting energy and time away from the World Trade Organization to focus on something that wouldn’t deal with subsidies,” said Patty Townsend, executive director of the alliance.
She said agriculture is often excluded from bilateral trade agreements anyway, so the federal government’s focus should remain on the WTO negotiations.
Free trade agreements weren’t the only topic of conversation when farm groups met with Martin. They also discussed the ongoing BSE crisis and short-term farm aid during the one-hour meeting.
The prime minister did not make any commitments to farm leaders.
